Open access statement

Open access means that anyone with an internet connection can access the output of research – be it a journal article, algorithm or methodology, as well as reports, case studies and blog posts – without the need to pay for access via a subscription or other mechanism.

Health Data Research UK’s guiding beliefs on open access

Transparency is a Health Data Research UK value.

Health Data Research UK receives funding from various sources, including government and charitable organisations. It therefore acts for the public good and must deliver value for money to the taxpayer and/or charitable donor.

By being open we can share more and learn quicker from each other’s successes and failures.

The public voice is at the heart of all we do – non-researchers must be able to access the outputs of Health Data Research UK research.

Open access of Health Data Research UK attributed research outputs

Scope

These principles apply to Health Data Research UK Members, as defined in the Health Data Research UK Attribution Policy.

Principles

Noting the above, Health Data Research UK:

Expects authors to maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free.

Expects outputs of work supported by Health Data Research UK to select publishing routes that ensure the work is available immediately on publication in its final published form, where possible.

Will allow those in receipt of Health Data Research UK funds to use their funding to pay an open access fee (e.g. article processing charges, where appropriate, to meet these principles.

Encourages – and where it pays an open access fee, require – authors and publishers to licence research papers using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) so they may be freely copied and re-used (for example, for text and data-mining purposes or creating a translation), provided that such uses are fully attributed.

Encourages outputs published in a peer-reviewed journal, and supported in whole or in part by Health Data Research UK funding, to be made available through PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC as soon as possible and in any event within six months of the journal publisher’s official date of final publication.

Expects data outputs, such as algorithms/software, to be uploaded to the Health Data Research UK GitHub Organisation repository (https://github.com/HDRUK) and made available to an open permissive licence (such as Apache Licence 2.0, MIT, MPL or BSD).

Open access of Health Data Research UK Company Documents such as Reports, Blogs and Case Studies

Scope

These principles apply to Health Data Research UK Members – which includes HDR UK Central staff – as defined in the Health Data Research UK Attribution Policy.

Principles

Noting the above, Health Data Research UK:

Wants our community to openly use, share and attribute Health Data Research UK’s outputs for the benefit of all. Therefore from the 1st May 2020 our publicly-accessible company documents are under Creative Commons Licence CC-BY.

This licence allows anyone to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.